Clarisse Thorn

I write and speak about subcultures, sexuality, and new media.

I’m just getting back from vacation, and during my trip a friend turned to me and asked, “So what’s up with you and polyamory?” So it seems like as good a time as any to post this rambling ….

Many alternative subcultures — including my main squeezes: science fiction and fantasy, gaming, and goth — overlap considerably with radical sex subcultures. That is, if you’re in one subculture, you’re likely to be familiar with the others. There’s an especial lot of overlap with consensual non-monogamy, particularly polyamory. (The other “main” sex subculture for consensual non-monogamy, swing, is better-represented among the mainstream.) The famous science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein was a fierce proponent of polyamory; indeed, when I first read his book Stranger in a Strange Land in middle school, I felt super frustrated by how negatively he portrayed monogamy.

As I got older and started integrating into alternative subcultures, I got more and more exposure to polyamory. I also got more and more exposure to “polyvangelists”: people who, like Heinlein, scornfully dismiss monogamy as “less evolved” or “less intelligent” or “more selfish” than polyamory. It enraged me. “Honestly,” I always said, “I really don’t care if you want to have multiple boyfriends and/or girlfriends, but quit telling me I’m wrong because I don’t!”

I toyed with poly — over the course of my first and longest-running relationship, I took a semester away in Europe, and my boyfriend and I decided to have an open relationship while I was on another continent. During that time, I started dating a European, and I was basically as monogamous as you can get while having another boyfriend across the ocean. I wasn’t remotely interested in dating other locals. My version of poly was as monogamous as possible, and when I returned to America I assumed my boyfriend and I would return to our previously-mono ways. He, however, didn’t assume the same thing. He wanted to stay poly.

Unfortunately, this became one of the biggest contested points in our relationship. We went back to being monogamous, but it was an uneasy dynamic. I tried to find compromises; I was comfortable saying that he could hook up with men but not women, for instance, which he did. At one point, I even said that although I felt really uncomfortable with the idea of being poly, I thought I might be able to handle it as long as he could assure me that he wouldn’t fall in love with his other sexual partners; he decided that he couldn’t promise that. He then cheated on me, which did not help the situation at all. (Responsible polyamorists don’t advocate cheating, by the way — if either partner is dishonest, most polyfolk will bristle and say “that’s not poly!”)

Being fascinated by sexuality and relationships, I’d already thought a lot about polyamory and monogamy, but the situation with my boyfriend threw my brain into overdrive. I tore myself apart trying to figure out why, although I was okay with other people being poly — I even argued in defense of poly when mainstream people stereotyped it! — I couldn’t stand the idea of being poly myself. I felt attacked, under siege, like I constantly had to defend or justify my preference.

I finally settled on thinking of monogamy as a “sexual orientation” or a “kink”: I figured that monogamy was just wired into me, sexually, the same way homosexuality might be for a gay person. (And I’ve met others who feel the same way — who characterize their monogamy as “innate”.)

Time passed. I came into my BDSM identity. I finally broke things off permanently with my first boyfriend; then I had two deep, intense, happily monogamous relationships. I still thought about polyamory sometimes, because it’s interesting, but I no longer felt anxious while doing so. One of my aggressively polyamorous friends characterized me as his “reasonably monogamous” friend, and told me that — although he feels most monogamous people don’t think hard enough about polyamory to justify dismissing it as an option — he thought that I certainly had. I accepted this accolade with a smile.

Then I got my heart broken. Badly, and dramatically. And ever since then … I’ve been feeling less and less monogamous. I still identified so strongly with my “monogamy orientation” that I told people monogamy was what I wanted, and I had some monogamous relationships … but I felt mounting unease. I wanted to be conducting relationships with multiple people; not just that, I also found myself fantasizing about sex with multiple people. Cautiously, I started negotiating limited forms of polyamory (for example, my last relationship and my current one have both been monogamous in terms of “traditional” sex, but not monogamous in terms of S&M partners) … but it didn’t feel like enough. I wanted to start experimenting with full-on polyamory and/or maybe to swing. In fact … I still … do?

Me, of all people! The “monogamy oriented” girl! The “reasonably monogamous” one! The one who considered it all so carefully and knew exactly what she wanted! How did this happen?

I broached the subject with my current boyfriend a few months ago; he reacted with unease, and later wrote me an email that said: I do not want to come between you and your explorations. My presence would not entirely hamper them (as I understand the things you’ve listed), but I think that I might well resist swinging or (particularly) polyamory. I’d hate to think I’d circumscribed you with regard to S&M, but I feel much more ambivalent about swing and poly, things less compelling to me, which conflict with my own desires regarding the ideal partner. If there’s one sticking point I have that’s actually (contrasted with apparently) going to be extremely difficult to negotiate, it’s monogamy.

“Conflict with my own desires regarding the ideal partner”: I read that with bemusement. Not because I can’t understand his perspective, but because the words sound exactly like something I would have said two years ago. Back then, my ideal partner was someone who would commit to me, monogamously; that’s reflected in everything I thought and everything I wrote during that time, including my recently-published coming-out story. But now ….?

How tempting, to blame my old heartbreak — maybe I’m still “really” mono, but I’ve got emotional baggage? Maybe I’m just afraid of commitment, afraid of putting “all my eggs in one basket”, in the wake of that experience? Maybe I’ve finally been (as “Moulin Rouge” would have it) cured of my ridiculous obsession with love, and I’m ready to take a more realistic view — one that doesn’t expect one person to be everything to me? Maybe I was only ever determined to be mono because I felt as though people were attacking me for being mono, and I had to resist? Yet this all seems so facile, so pop-psychological. My heart’s been broken before, for one thing.

Still, here’s another pop-psychological twist: recently, I’ve not only fantasized about sex with multiple people; I’ve fantasized about partners hurting my feelings by having sex with other people. Remember folks, I’m a submissive masochist, and when I’m in the proper mood I like it when my lovers make me cry — though it never occurred to me that I’d get turned on by the idea of so much emotional pain. Turned on by the idea of a lover savagely breaking my heart, leaving me for someone more beautiful, successful, etc ….

Most unsettlingly, I’m afraid that not only am I still “really” mono, but that going for poly relationships will end up screwing me. I’m afraid that if I were to fall blazingly, consumingly, totally in love again … the poly leanings would disappear. Here’s the scariest question: is this attraction to polyamory simply coming up because I’m not perfectly in love?

If my ideal partner would be monogamous, but I want to be poly because I’m not sure I can find my ideal partner, then that doesn’t just seem dangerous; it seems … dishonest. I know polyfolk who have been really hurt by newly-poly people who thought they were open to a poly relationship — but then the newly-poly person finds The One, feels a strong pull back towards monogamy, and dumps her poly partners. Certainly, if I were a poly person reading this, then — looking at my own reservations — I wouldn’t date me. But then again, what if this really does mark a sea change in my outlook, and I’d be perfectly happy being polyamorous indefinitely?

I know one smart BDSM educator who makes it a point to warn kinksters just entering the community that “desires change over time”, and that one should be prepared. I thought I knew that. But I wasn’t prepared for this.

I want to end on one important point: just because I may be interested in poly now does not mean that it was the best thing for me all along. There’s a difference between these feelings and, say, my BDSM orientation. I recognize BDSM as something I’ve been looking for my entire life — but, for me, the same is not true of polyamory (although I believe that there are polyamorists out there who feel it as an innate identity, like for example Raven Kaldera). In fact, I’m sure that I would never have evolved into this interest in polyamory if I’d kept dating a partner who was pressuring me into it despite my doubts and anxieties. But this is a whole nother post, so I’ll end here.

17 Responses to “Am I evolving away from monogamy?”

Clarisse, I don’t know how you do it. Maybe because I’m old and grizzled and have in many ways a very settled life, I don’t have much to process on my blog that’s new to me, and that has me staying up nights and looking inside myself. You’re on the ragged edge all the time, telling your readers about figuring yourself out while it’s happening. I couldn’t do it, but I can’t stop reading when you do.

Thomas is right – you’re always fascinating to read. I wonder if your ‘being on the edge’ *while* being able to conceptualize *and* being able to verbalize being on the edge may not sometimes lead you to a point at which you’re not just applying concepts to denote what’s going on inside yourself, but at which these concepts also influence your inner discourse itself. I mean, in a way that’s the case for everyone and everything – Classic Wittgenstein, whereof we cannot speak thereof we have to remain silent – but I suppose that being on the edge implies a special need for labeling experiences and emotions for which there are only imperfect definitions. Does that make sense?

I completely believe that the love one can give is not a finite quantity. It’s totally possible to fall in love with someone new while not falling out of love with someone ‘old’. Do quadruplets love each other 1/4 less than triplets love each other, simply because there’s one more sibling? Hardly. Sure, logistics will become difficult at a certain point, and honesty and jealousy will become difficult to manage, maybe there will even be a number at which love will become elusive – there seem to be implied practical bounds to polyamorous relationships. But within those bounds – I don’t think love is a limited resourse.

That said – did you see the part of the polyamory faq you linked to where the author writes that someone who isn’t sure about being able to commit to one person probably won’t be able to commmit to two? Seems counterintuitive at first sight, but maybe it is not. And maybe that’s a hint for your question about being not so sure about being not so sure…

@Thomas — Heh. I sometimes wonder if I’ll figure myself out and settle into a happy relationship and then get bored with sexuality and move on to a new exciting field of inquiry. I’ve been thinking and writing about sexuality and gender for basically my whole life, though (not just here), so it seems unlikely that I’ll get over it.

@Sam — I suppose that being on the edge implies a special need for labeling experiences and emotions for which there are only imperfect definitions.

Okay, but does that imply that there are perfect definitions for some experiences and emotions? Which ones?

I don’t think love is a limited resourse.

Well, me neither, but that has always struck me as somewhat beside the point in terms of polyamory vs. monogamy. I don’t know any mono people who actually assert that we can’t love more than one person at once; the question is what it would mean for our relationships and how it would intersect with our personalities if we facilitated multiple relationships. As one mono friend once put it, “I just work better with devotion.” It doesn’t feel (or at least, in the past it hasn’t felt) like a “sacrifice” for me to “give up” having multiple relationships; it feels (felt) like … the way things are. Like that’s what it means to be in love. In the past, when I’ve been in love with one person and tried to hook up with others, it never felt right, as if my body were keyed to one person. I can brute-force my way past that “one person” feeling, sort of (and I’ve had to, after breakups and such) but it hurts, and sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it. (As an example: after I broke up with Mr. Inferno a couple years ago, I couldn’t bring myself to even think about sexual activity with anyone else for months. Six months afterwards I hooked up with another ex at a party, and I had to stop halfway through because I was just crying, it felt so wrong.)

did you see the part of the polyamory faq you linked to where the author writes that someone who isn’t sure about being able to commit to one person probably won’t be able to commmit to two.

That is a good point. And possibly what I should be doing is not having relationships except with people who can accept it when I say, “I can’t commit to this,” rather than trying to have monogamous vs. polyamorous relationships.

Extra credit, semi-irrelevant but on the subject of multiple relationships anyway: I recently passed a South African women’s Cosmo-esque magazine in the supermarket checkout line that bore the headline, “Polygamy: Culture or Men Behaving Badly?”

Still, here’s another pop-psychological twist: recently, I’ve not only fantasized about sex with multiple people; I’ve fantasized about partners hurting my feelings by having sex with other people. Remember folks, I’m a submissive masochist, and when I’m in the proper mood I like it when my lovers make me cry — though it never occurred to me that I’d get turned on by the idea of so much emotional pain. Turned on by the idea of a lover savagely breaking my heart, leaving me for someone more beautiful, successful, etc ….

Doesn’t inflicting physical pain have a similar emotional dimension to it for you? There seems to be a pretty strong current of “martyrdom” in a lot of submissive fantasy, whether that’s being hit or used or being denied pleasure or being betrayed. It all seems kind of similar to me, even perhaps the sex with multiple partners.

“Okay, but does that imply that there are perfect definitions for some experiences and emotions? Which ones?

Well, I think there’s a continuum of definitional ambiguity – as I said, in a way that’s the same for everything and everyone. I think that, say, “monogamy” seems to be a concept that is well defined for most people. Changes in the what is meant are expressed by qualifiers, say, “serial” monogamy or “monogamy with benefits” (like making out with others). I think that’s different with polyamory – reading the faq you linked to I got the impression that the main definitional element is “mutually agreed on romantic involvement of more than two people”. But that seems to be something that doesn’t appear to be exclusive to polyamory, in my opinion. Thus my question whether lack of clarity of the concept itself may lead to the kind of uncertainty about the questions you’re asking and to a point where definitional uncertainty may reinforce emotional uncertainty and thus become a part of the experience itself.

“In the past, when I’ve been in love with one person and tried to hook up with others, it never felt right, as if my body were keyed to one person.”

Well, maybe your body is indeed trying to tell you something – but maybe your physical reactions change along with your changing point in life, your changing ability to verbalize these things. The feeling will always be special, but I’m pretty sure our concept of love, and how we approach it, changes as our perspective changes. Maybe the ability to treat these things more rationally does feel a little like a relative lack of involvement, and maybe, in such a case, we just miss something about a past feeling, even though we don’t rationally would want it back.

Maybe I can illustrate this with a change I experienced – before I learned to better interact women, I sometimes had this “awe-moment” when I saw a beautiful woman, when all I wanted to do was look at her and admire her beauty. And while I couldn’t be more happy that I am now likely able to say “hi” to her and actually get to know her, I sometimes do miss this odd feeling of being “struck by beauty” that I had before.

“Extra credit, semi-irrelevant but on the subject of multiple relationships anyway: I recently passed a South African women’s Cosmo-esque magazine in the supermarket checkout line that bore the headline, “Polygamy: Culture or Men Behaving Badly?”

I wonder if something like a “polygyny-factor” isn’t one of humanities basic social variables. Didn’t I link to this – http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-anything-good-about-men-and-other-tricky-questions/ – essay in the manliness thread when we talked about the wanted vs needed element and how only the “needed” structure was apparently able to ensure that male reproduction rates were as high as female reproduction rates. I mean, no one knows how technology will change the female reproduction rate, it certainly looks likely that it is decreasing significantly – down to socially suicidal rates in, say, Italy, Spain, or Germany. But it’s too early to tell whether that’s a long term trend or not and how it will influence the human “polygyny-factor” and change the relative reproductive expendability of the sexes. Interestingly, I’ve just read an article about de facto polygyny in black communities in the US as a consequence of male scarcity due to higher incarceration rates of black men –

I’m very intrigued by your notion that monogamy and polyamory are like sexual orientations, because I’ve been holding a similar theory for a while.

You might find it interesting to look into the concept of attachment style. Attachment style is considered partly biological, and partly developed through experience. Attachment style will influence whether people value security in a relationship, or independence, and other values that might influence their preference for monogamy vs. polyamory. People with pre-occupied/insecure/anxious attachment style will probably find polyamory intolerable. People with some combination of secure and avoidant attachment style (like me) might find polyamory more appealing.

Another interesting concept is Kinsey’s concept of sociosexuality the tendency to engage in uncommitted sex. The sociosexual orientation concept is about short-term vs. long-term mating. This concept isn’t identical to the notion of a polyamorous vs. monogamous sexual orientations (which is mainly about single vs. multiple partners), but there is probably some overlap, and both are counter to a monogamous mating strategy, and since one common poly arrangement is a single long-term “primary” partner, and secondary shorter-term partners.

Sociosexuality has a bunch of biologically-related correlates, such as facial structure and people’s judgments based on it, and (in a study of women) digit ratio, and scores on a mental rotation test. People exhibiting the more male-typical or masculine traits tended to have higher sociosexuality, and men tend to score higher than women.

Since homosexuality has a ton of biological correlates, these findings bolster the analogy of sociosexuality (and by extension, monogamy/polyamory) to sexual orientation.

Your observation of the overlap of polyamory with scifi/fantasy, gaming, and other subcultures is also consistent with my experience. I’m seeing a very interesting pattern: men are overrepresented in scifi and gaming. In studies on kinks (researchers would use the term “paraphilias”), men on average turn out to be kinkier. Men are higher in sociosexuality, and women who are higher in sociosexuality are more like men in digit ratio and mental rotation scores. (Anecdotally, women interested in gaming and other “nerdy” pursuits also have interests and personality traits that are more common in men than in women). I wonder what could be causing this?

@machina — It all seems kind of similar to me, even perhaps the sex with multiple partners.

I think from the outside it’s easy to look at other people’s kinks and be like, “this is all the same thing,” but usually kinksters have very specific desires …. It’s not that I can’t see thematic similarities, just that thematic similarities aren’t all there is to kink. Does that make sense? A lot of kinksters make this point with the stubbed toe example: “I like a lot of pain, but it does not make me happy to stub my toe.”

@Sam — reading the faq you linked to I got the impression that the main definitional element is “mutually agreed on romantic involvement of more than two people”. But that seems to be something that doesn’t appear to be exclusive to polyamory, in my opinion. Thus my question …

Yeah, I think the one thing that is common to polyamory is a massive emphasis on Super Communication Powers and constantly talking things out and pinning the relationship down. You make the point that multiple partners isn’t something unique to poly — I’d argue that the Super Communication Powers, specific respect for others’ boundaries, etc. are particularly good within the poly community, though.

Interestingly, I’ve just read an article about de facto polygyny in black communities in the US as a consequence of male scarcity due to higher incarceration rates of black men.

Yes, I’ve heard a lot about that too … I don’t know much about it but I’ve read that it also feeds into a very difficult situation for Black women who are unable to negotiate good relationships due to male scarcity (this is used as an explanation for high abuse rates and such, I think, though — again — I don’t know much about it).

Trying to load a bunch of these links now. I will probably be able to finish this comment before they load :P

@Hugh — I always get a little bristly when people associate monogamy with being insecure or anxious, although I do recognize that those words have specific technical definitions in the attachment styles link you provided.

Those biologically masculine correlates to high sociosexuality are surprising. I wouldn’t have foreseen that. Honestly though, every time I see research like that I end up back at a place where I’m thinking … “so?” I mean, I think it’s relevant to my life if there are more kinky men than women, but I’m not convinced it’s relevant to my life that sociosexual women are more similar to men in a few biological ways. I wish there was more focus on what the current situation is, and advice for dealing with it, rather than so much on “how we got to be the way we are”.

I feel like monogamy is more like
a kink in itself than a secure-nonsecure pattern. I’d be interested
to know if there’s data on what kind of attachment styles (secure or
nonsecure) are prevalent among people who are poly and people who are
mono. I say this partly because I feel like with the mono people I
know (including me), much of the desire for mono was motivated less
out of anxiety that the partner would stray and more because that’s
how the mono person herself expresses love — when I was feeling
hardcore mono, I didn’t feel like it was a sacrifice to devote myself
to one person. Devoting myself to one person was what I wanted.

My main objection to poly was always that poly didn’t feel right,
that I felt no attraction to having multiple partners myself, and
couldn’t understand how my partner could. Not that I couldn’t accept
that some people are into poly — just that I couldn’t really wrap my
head around it, or desire it myself, which made it hard to desire a
partner who desires it, you know? Sure I felt jealous when my partner
seemed super into someone else, but I also felt upset if my partner
didn’t appear to get a bit jealous and territorial of me when I was
super into someone else.

Clarisse: I think from the outside it’s easy to look at other people’s kinks and be like, “this is all the same thing,” but usually kinksters have very specific desires …. It’s not that I can’t see thematic similarities, just that thematic similarities aren’t all there is to kink. Does that make sense? A lot of kinksters make this point with the stubbed toe example: “I like a lot of pain, but it does not make me happy to stub my toe.”

Ok, as an analogy, in a post-apocalyptic movie, the context serves as well, a context, for various themes to play out. You could have those same themes play out in a Roman-era movie. While you might like a post-apocalyptic aesthetic over a Roman aesthetic, the underlying themes might well be the same. So I can see that there are differences between appreciating one aesthetic over another I think that themes seem to run through a lot of fantasy.

I’m fascinated by calling it “monogamy” when you saw someone in Europe while you had a boyfriend.

How far apart do you need to be to call it that?

Anyway, it started the same way for me, too (well, in my current relationship). But I don’t tend to confuse lust and love, and he doesn’t feel jealous sharing me physically.

It was much more difficult when I met someone I really liked. At no point did I feel like my fiance didn’t fulfill me enough. I just happened to have met another person who I liked to spend time with. My fiance felt bad that he worried that I would end up leaving him, but he did worry. I think that’s fair.

After fits and starts, we figured things out pretty well. I’ve ended up feeling more good-friends with the boyfriend, anyway. Well, friends who have sex.

@maggie — Well, in that paragraph I did say that I was “toying with poly” ….

I toyed with poly — over the course of my first and longest-running relationship, I took a semester away in Europe, and my boyfriend and I decided to have an open relationship while I was on another continent. During that time, I started dating a European, and I was basically as monogamous as you can get while having another boyfriend across the ocean. I wasn’t remotely interested in dating other locals. My version of poly was as monogamous as possible, and when I returned to America I assumed my boyfriend and I would return to our previously-mono ways. He, however, didn’t assume the same thing. He wanted to stay poly.

… though I also said that I was “as monogamous as you can get”, which was true — I was exclusive with my boyfriend in Europe.

I’m glad things are working out for you — I always like hearing stories of polyamorous relationships that are working well.

(Scanning through some of your back posts here after blogresponding to one and getting a comment back …)

This poly person has always had a better time grasping people wired up for monogamy than many, actually. Because I stop being interested in new serious partners when I have two primary relationships, much like a wired-up monogamous person stops being interested in new serious partners when they have one primary relationship.

I always kind of cringe, though, when I hear polystuff treated as “multiple people in a relationship” or suggest that secondary relationships are short-term and/or disposable, as a comment did above. (I do neither and am moderately squicked by both, in fact.)

Part of the “fun” of poly stuff is the way so much is undefined. Knowing someone is poly gives me no useful information on whether they conduct relationships like I do….

Dw3t-Hthr; it’s interesting to say that part of the fun of polyamory is how undefined things are. It’s been said in many places, but there is an issue that we have a mostly-common cultural understanding of what monogamy is, and while polyamory isn’t {all sexual styles} – {monogamy}, it’s a very large set.

My most significant other and I have been together for about 5 years, and have been experimenting with polyamory for the last year. Within that undefined space, I don’t know where I am, and don’t know how well it matches up with where she is. So far, polyamory has improved our Super Communication Powers and our sex life, and thus our relationship as a whole, but at this point neither of us has had the opportunity to have another truly significant other, so while we’ve agreed that that’s completely okay, we haven’t actually tested that.

So as far as useful information about how someone conducts relationships…I could tell you how I /plan/ to conduct my own relationships, but as supposedly-monogamous relationships show, that plan isn’t a terribly good predictor of actual behavior.

About Clarisse

On the other hand, my latest book is about the history, stereotypes, and culture of BDSM:

I give great lectures on my favorite topics. I've spoken at a huge variety of places — academic institutions like the University of Chicago; new media conventions like South By Southwest; museums like the Museum of Sex; and lots of others.

I established myself by creating this blog. I don't update the blog much anymore, but you can still read my archives. My best writing is available in my books, anyway.

I've lived in Swaziland, Greece, Chicago, and a lot of other places. I've worked in game design, public health, and bookstores. Now I live in San Francisco, and I make my living with content strategy and user research.